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Tarting up Thanksgiving

Well-chosen pickles, condiments give traditional dishes a little zip

By Cindy Sutter

Staff Writer

Posted:
11/18/2015 01:00:00 AM MST

Creole Spiced Okra, center, from The Real Dill, in Denver; Roasted Tomato Chutney, left, from Prairie Thyme, in Santa Fe, N.M., and the House Olive Blend from Cured, in Boulder, make up a Thanksgiving relish tray for the modern age. (Jeremy Papasso / Staff Photographer)

Piccalilli from The Good Jar, in Boulder, contains green tomatoes, cloves, cinnamon and brown sugar. One version is spiced with habaneros. (Eric Vierra / Courtesy photo)

America's traditional harvest table is heavy with mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy, foods we rarely eat the rest of the year. That celebration of abundance, with a big, fat dollop of gratitude, is very much on point. Yet the taste buds remain on the hunt for a little novelty beyond cranberry sauce.

Here's to adding a sour note to your Thanksgiving, and I mean that in the best possible way.

It's time to reconsider the relish tray.

Once a showcase for beautiful homemade pickles, by the time many of us grew up, that divided crystal dish had become a puzzling addition to the holiday meal. Every year, my mother dutifully filled it with canned black olives, green olives and sweet pickles. None of these was ever touched, except once when my 3-year-old sister sneaked up to the table before the meal and donned the black olives as so many faux fingernails, adding a note of comedy before we said grace.

Owner Will Frischkorn uses a meat slicer to prepare a customer's order at Cured. (Jeremy Papasso / Staff Photographer)

Nowadays, it's possible to fill that dish with something you'd actually want to eat, some little sourish-bites that will bring out the best in those oh-so-rich traditional dishes. That's likely because many of the new pickles, relishes and chutneys are a twist on great-grandma's pickles straight off the farm.

Will Frischkorn, who owns Cured with his wife, Coral, says many of the pickles and condiments sold by the shops (there's a newly opened Cure on 10th near Pearl Street in addition to the original Pearl Street location eight blocks east) have an element of heritage.

"(They are) cool things that people are making from family recipes or things they've loved during travel," he says.

For his Thanksgiving table, Frischkorn likes tomato chutney, for example, since it can make a dynamite turkey sandwich when the time for eating even more food inevitably rolls around. He and Coral also keep the store's olive mix on hand for Thanksgiving, as well as other occasions.

"It's one thing we always have copious amounts in the house," he says. "They're easy, and everybody loves them."

They also have at home many of the items they stock at Cured. Those include pickles by The Good Jar, started last year in Boulder by Eric Vierra.

"I had a long history of canning as a hobby," he says. "I remember growing up and having some of my grandmother's pickles."

Vierra was raised in New England loving the traditional turkey, although he says it's the gravy that makes it Thanksgiving.

"It's the stuffing with the gravy on it, the turkey with the gravy on it, and you splash a little gravy on the peas, too."

Vierra is not one to mess with the core experience, but he also vividly remembers the accompaniments, "the little gherkins, the cornichons, the bowls of nuts that the uncles would dive into."

Nowadays, he makes some of those accompaniments in a commercial kitchen space in Longmont.

One he believes goes well with holiday fare is his piccalilli, which, for the uninitiated, contains green tomatoes and onions spiced with cinnamon, cloves and brown sugar. Vierra makes a traditional variety, as well as one with a little twist: habanero peppers.

"The piccalilli goes way back," he says, adding that it was inspired by his grandmother's recipe, although it's not the same. Vierra also makes pickled okra, dilly beans and bread and butter pickles.

"(Pickles) may have fallen out of fashion because everything was coming from large manufacturers," he says. "I'm a strong believer in the freshness of produce when it comes to pickling."

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